It's not a phobia.
When you ask people about their earliest memories, most will talk about family or Christmas or places of warmth and happiness. My earliest memories prescribe a life long abhorrence of tomatoes. At three, I howled at a kindergarten picnic because no one would take me seriously when I said I didn’t want tomato sauce on my bread roll. My anti-tomato sentiments are certainly not the acute or ephemeral whim of a crazed zimble.
The reason for the tomato's existence is totally beyond me. Why this fruit should ever have succeeded on the rocky slopes of evolution is a conundrum of the highest order. The reality is that the tomato is a pestilential blight on the earth and should be forced onto the endangered species list as quickly as possible with a view to its total annihilation.
I hardly need to expound the deficiencies of the tomato. Even if anti-tomatoism is not yet their reality, most decent and sensible people have some intuitive understanding of the problem. They know their love of the tomato is a mere illusion.
There the tomato sits, all red and shiny, plump and inviting, whilst secretly hiding a squelchy horror worthy of Beelzebub himself. Its pretence of ripeness is a shallow ruse with sour immaturity and post-date putrefaction its norm. Unforgiving of an even slightly blunt knife, the tomato spurts in the eye of the unwary.
Of course, the greatest and most obvious deficiency of the tomato is its philosophical bent. Here is a fruit that pretends to be a vegetable! The tomato is living a lie! It has none of the sweetness of the strawberry, the sunniness of the orange or any of the practicality of the banana. The tomato, if it were going to ‘be’ anywhere, should have stuck to fungal decay on the floors of remote jungle valleys instead of plonking itself into the baskets of innocent grocery shoppers.
From the bitter, bruise-if-you-blink skin to the slimy seeds of its hollow core the tomato is a rotter.
2 comments:
That tomato in the photo looks so perfect, juicy and inviting...
From http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodlore/a/tomatolore.htm
Up until the end of the eighteenth century, physicians warned against eating tomatoes, fearing they caused not only appendicitis but also stomach cancer from tomato skins adhering to the lining of the stomach.
Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson of Salem, New Jersey had brought the tomato home from abroad in 1808. He had been offering a prize yearly for the largest fruit grown, but the general public considered the tomato an ornamental plant rather than one for food.
As the story is told, it was Colonel Johnson who on September 26, 1820 once and for all proved tomatoes non-poisonous and safe for consumption. He stood on the steps of the Salem courthouse and bravely consumed an entire basket of tomatoes without keeling over or suffering any ill effects whatsoever.
His grandstanding attracted a crowd over over 2,000 people who were certain he was committing public suicide. The local firemen's band even played a mournful dirge to add to the perceived morbid display of courage.
Thanks Shado!
Clearly an unstable fellow. It's a wonder the townsfolk didn't follow their Massachusetts cousins and commit him to trial for sorcery!
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